


Shouting at the Sky

by DameRuth



Series: Iron Sharpening Iron [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dark, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-21
Updated: 2010-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:57:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU Ten/Master "what if?" (SPOILERS for "End of Time")</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shouting at the Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luvs_blindly](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=luvs_blindly).



> Written for the ["Saying Yes 2010"](http://community.livejournal.com/saying_yes_2010/) sex-positive ficathon over on LJ, to luvs_blindly's prompt, "[Tenth]Doctor/Master: Awkward first times."
> 
> I had to ponder how to write a "first times" story for Ten and the Master, and ended up with this story; hope it at least sorta fills the prompt. Note that though some of this (especially the Time Lord mind!sex/memory-sharing) resembles things I've written before, especially in "Flowers," this a completely standalone piece, not meant to be part of any series.

**The best kind of friend is like iron sharpening iron. -- Shriekback, "The Reptiles and I"**

 

The Master awoke curled up and retching as he body sought to free his lungs of the fluid filling them: tissue renewal solution, he realized, recognizing it by the taste. He was cold, frozen to the core, the aftereffects of a healing coma.

"Easy! Easy, I've got you!" said a familiar voice as hands supported him. He knew at a gut level that he should recoil from that voice and touch, but he was too dazed and disoriented to do anything but accept the help.

The first breath of air burned like fire in his chest, but it gave him the strength to heave the last of the fluid out. The second breath felt even worse, but the third was easier. He blinked and wiped the viscous liquid away from his eyes. He was half-lying in a freshly-drained renewal tank, wearing nothing but nutrient solution. From the throb and hum in the air, he was inside a TARDIS; little doubt whose. The supporting hands eased away from him and he focused on a thin man in a brown suit; old eyes in a young face, eyes the Master would know anywhere.

"Doctor," he said, flooded with such a surge of emotion it made him shudder, though he couldn't have named what he felt, or even said if it was positive or negative.

"Master," the Doctor said, reserved and cool. Guarded. Watching. The Master had always been the one to cultivate hypnotic powers, but now he was the one who couldn't look away from those dark, enigmatic eyes. He felt unbalanced, as if something vital was missing from the foundations of his personality.

The drums, he realized. They were gone and he was empty inside.

"I took them away," the Doctor said, reading the moment of understanding in the Master's expression, not needing words or even shared thoughts to know what was going through his mind. Centuries of love and hate had done that, bound them tighter and tighter together the more they'd struggled to be free of each other. "Once I knew what they were, it was easy. Then I completed your resurrection; you aren't bleeding your life away anymore."

It was true; the hunger, like the drums, was gone. The Master began to shake, only partly from his body's attempt to shiver itself back to something approaching a normal body temperature. "What am I now?" he growled. "What did you make me?" He couldn't keep the anguish out of his voice.

"I don't know," the Doctor said softly, raising his eyebrows. "Maybe you're beautiful."

The Master gripped the side of the tank, his hand slipping before anchoring properly, and hauled himself towards the Doctor, until their foreheads were nearly touching, staring eye-to-eye. The Doctor didn't flinch, holding his ground. "What gave you the right?"

"I'm the Doctor," was the even reply. "You said it yourself, I make people better."

"Sanctimonious as ever! For Rassilon's sake –" The Master stopped short, remembering. Four bolts of his own life force, hitting a living legend right between the hearts and dropping him to the ground just before the link was completely broken and the Time Lords were whipped away, back into the War. Anger dissolved in low, wicked laughter. "Rassilon. I took down _Rassilon._"

"You _would_ be proud of that," the Doctor said, so uptight and disapproving the Master laughed again . . . and then, without conscious decision, his lips locked onto the Doctor's. The Doctor's response was immediate and unequivocal as suppressed tension found eager release.

The Master's body thrummed with reawakened life, his temperature rising precipitously. That wasn't the only physical effect either; when the kiss ended, the Master knew his lack of clothing meant there was no way his reaction wasn't visible. The Doctor, on the other hand, was fully clothed, down to tie and suit jacket, but the Master didn't need to see the Doctor's body; he could taste the heavy musk of arousal in the Doctor's scent. There could be no doubt: both of them wanted the same thing, ached for it, but neither of them moved.

It had been a long time – centuries – filled with conflict and broken trust, including genuine attempts to kill. It wasn't the sort of gulf that could be easily crossed, not even now, with everything changed and uncertain between them.

The Doctor's face was inches away, this incarnation's dark eyes gone even darker, his lips moist and parted, all but begging for more kissing. "So now what?" the Master asked, his voice low and husky. "We fall into each other's arms and it all goes to rainbows and hearts and angels singing? All our past sins washed away?"

The Doctor shook his head, a tiny back-and-forth movement. "No. The past doesn't go away like that. But we can find the future together."

"Your optimism is sickening."

Another headshake. "Not optimism. Pragmatism. Forward's the only way open to us. Looking backwards doesn't help. Unless . . ."

"Yes?" He was proud of the level of sarcasm he managed to pack into that single word.

"Unless we go far enough back," he Doctor said, letting his head fall forward until his forehead touched the Master's, his hand reaching up to cradle the side of the other man's face.

_Back to before we were broken,_ the Doctor finished in a telepathic whisper as he offered his thoughts to the Master.

He knew he should pull back, should refuse to wallow in whatever saccharine vision the Doctor sought to conjure . . . but he found he couldn't. Without the drums, the inside of his head was deathly quiet and this contact was as desirable as the kiss had been.

_Red grass, stretching to the horizon across the flanks of the mountains. It ripples in waves of blood, claret and gold as two boys run wild, racing the wind, shouting for the sheer joy of stretching young, itchy muscles in this reprieve from the rigid discipline of the Citadel. Both of them find it stifling, for all the pleasure to be had there in learning the things that will make them Lords of Time; their teachers glare at them, and other students pull away, whispering, but there is nobody here, now, beneath the wide open sky, but the two of them. _

Hands catch and clasp, in competition as much as affection, and, pulled off balance, they tumble to the ground, rolling to break the impact until they reach the bottom of the gradual slope of ground. The tall, red grass forms a wall, cutting them off from everything but the hot orange sky and each other. Laughing and swearing, they grapple and wrestle, hands wandering, until suddenly they're kissing, a kiss as unexpected as the one centuries later over the rim of a renewal tank.

Neither of them has a clue what they're doing, beyond the most abstract theory, but what they lack in practical knowledge they more than make up for in enthusiasm as they realize their mutual advances are not just being accepted but actively encouraged. They've been building to this for a long, long time, all unknowing, but they realize it now. They let instinct and pleasure guide them until their voices echo up to the sky again, shouting in a different kind of joy.

The memory evaporated, and the Master realized that not everything he'd been feeling was mere memory. They' were standing now, the Master with his feet in the tank, the Doctor on the floor outside. His hands are working across the Doctor's chest, shirt and suit jacket ripped aside, their mouths joined in another hungry kiss, and the Doctor's hand reaching over the side of the tank and down to work the Master's length, the slick renewal solution serving a fortuitous secondary purpose. The pleasure was so intense he had to pull away and grit his teeth. It hadn't felt that good, that easy, that uncomplicated in more years than he could count . . . maybe not since that first day, back under the open sky of his father's estates, back before the drums had become deafening and all-consuming.

The only beat-of-four he heard now was the thundering of his own hearts, echoed in the Doctor's racing pulse.

"Koschei . . ." the Doctor murmured, throwing his head back as clever fingers found and tweaked taut nipples – then he yelped as the tweak turned to a sharp pinch. Angry brown eyes opened and glared as the Doctor's working, teasing hand stilled.

"My. Name. Is. The Master. And don't you forget it," the Master snarled, glaring back.

The Doctor's lip lifted in something far too grim to be a smile and his hand gripped and twisted in a movement that wrung a strangled gasp from the Master's throat as the border between pleasure and pain abruptly blurred, nerve endings overloading. "Never," the Doctor breathed, and there was a sea of darkness behind his eyes, nothing innocent or sentimental left.

They weren't boys now; were Time Lords in the fullness of their knowledge and power. Equals, more than a match for each other, as they'd proven countless times before. The Master laughed in appreciation, breathing hard. Maybe, just maybe, there was a new beginning and a future here after all.

"Prove it," he said, flashing the grin that had stopped brave men in their tracks. The Doctor grinned back, accepting the challenge. The sickbay floor was hard, cold and sterile, nothing like the springy red turf of home, but soon enough their voices rose in release and freedom, loud enough to fill the room with the memory of a long-lost sky.


End file.
